


Holding On and Together

by Fangirl_fanatic



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Angst, F/F, Heavy Angst, Suicide, Suicide Attempt, trigger warning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-26
Updated: 2018-06-26
Packaged: 2019-05-28 21:30:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15058202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fangirl_fanatic/pseuds/Fangirl_fanatic
Summary: Maggie can't live without Alex. She can't and she won't. So this can't be real. This can't be happening. But it is. It's real and it's happening and it's terrible. Alex is bleeding out on the bathroom floor and Maggie is panicking.***Trigger warning for depiction of suicide***





	Holding On and Together

Maggie doesn't even completely remember what the fight was about. Something about Alex trying to push her away. All Maggie remembers now is that the fight ended with Alex yelling at her to get out. Now she knows there's something wrong. Knows there's something going on with Alex. 

Alex isn't answering her phone.  She also won't come to open the door that Maggie stormed out of twenty minutes earlier. Maggie has been banging on it for too long and the neighbors keep peeking their heads out to see what's going on. Maggie ignores them and continues to knock. She doesn't want to have to use her spare key if Alex hasn't given explicit permission to enter the apartment. 

Three minutes later, Maggie gives in and pulls the key out of her pocket. She unlocks the door and rushes into the apartment, looking around for any sign of Alex. Maggie knows she's still here. Her keys are resting on the counter and her jacket is still flung on the couch.

"Alex! Where are you? Alex!" Maggie calls out and there's no reply. She starts rushing around the apartment, looking all over the place for Alex. She stops outside the closed bathroom door. 

"Alex? I know you're in there." Maggie knocks tentatively on the door and there isn't a response on the other side. At this point, Maggie's stomach is in knots and her heart is beating faster than it should be. Something is definitely wrong. 

"Alex?" Maggie knocks one more time before trying the handle. Unlocked. She starts pulling the door opened, giving Alex enough time to say something if she needs to. Not a word comes from inside, so Maggie swings the door open. The sight that is in front of her takes the breath out of her lungs and makes her stomach churn in fear. 

Alex leans against the wall, her wrist dripping into the bathtub. And blood. So much blood. Everywhere. On the floor, Alex's wrists, the bath. All over the place. Maggie has never been squeamish around blood. But knowing it's Alex's -her Alex's- makes everything so much worse. 

Maggie rushes in, her heart beating even faster and her legs feeling like they're about to give out from beneath her. She rushes over to Alex and squats down next to her. Maggie pulls Alex's body into hers and her fingers feel for Alex's pulse. Her heartbeat. The thing that tells Maggie if her entire world is alive or not. She feels it, faint but there. 

Maggie has never been more relieved to have her phone on her. She pulls it out and fumbles an urgent text to Kara as she tries to make the blood stop. It shouldn't take more than a minute for the hero to arrive. As she waits for Kara to show up and tries to stop the blood flow, Maggie pleads to Alex, whose eyes are only open in small slits.

"Please don't leave me. I need you. I love you, Alex, stay with me," She cries, on the verge of screaming. Kara then flies into the apartment, dressed in her Supergirl attire. She's immediately next to them and is lifting Alex out of Maggie's grasp. 

"No!" Maggie protests weakly, wanting to be by Alex's side until she knows her girlfriend is okay. Kara turns around, tears in her eyes, and gives the cop a desperate look. 

"I need to get her to the DEO, now. Meet me there." With that, Kara flies back out the window, leaving Maggie behind and broken. 

Maggie doesn't remember how she gets to the DEO. She doesn't remember how she makes it through security or how she finds the directions to where Alex was. But, somehow, she ends up outside Alex's room half an hour later. 

Maggie can see Alex laying in the medical bed. Her wrists bandaged, probably stitched underneath the gauze, and her eyes closed. There's an IV drip in her arm and a heart monitor showing vitals. Kara is sitting in a chair on Alex's right side and she's holding her sister's hand. Kara's eyes are swollen and red and she looks drained. 

Maggie walks into the room nervously,  taking a seat on Alex's other side and grabbing her other hand. Kara tears her gaze away from Alex and raises her head to look at Maggie. They meet each other's stare and hold it, pulling strength from the other. 

"What happened, Maggie?" Kara's voice is just above a whisper and it cracks twice. She goes to answer with a rapid heartbeat that Maggie knows the blond can hear. 

"It's all my fault, Kara! We got in a huge fight and she told me to leave, so I did. And I came back to her laying on the bathroom floor, almost unconscious. It's all my fault!" Maggie breaks down, lowering her head to cry into her hands. Kara is at Maggie's side in an instant, wrapping her right arm around the detective's shoulder. Kara leans her body into the smaller women's. 

"Maggie, this isn't your fault. I promise. So you guys got in a fight, all couples fight. And you didn't know she was going to do this. There was no way you could've known, okay? This isn't your fault, do you understand?" Kara squeezes Maggie tighter as if punctuating the question. Maggie just nods in response, her tears still falling. After she's finally stops crying, Maggie pulls away from the superhero. She gives her an apologetic yet thankful smile. 

Kara doesn't move back to the other side of the room. Instead, she stays next to Maggie. She takes the hand that isn't holding Alex's in the hand that isn't wrapped around her sister's girlfriend. They stay like that for longer than either of them realize. They don't even move a muscle until Winn and James coming running into the med bay, rushing into the room.

"Oh my God! What happened?" Winn cries out as soon as he sees Alex. Maggie and Kara both turn around to look at the two men and then turn to look at each other. Kara speaks up, putting her Supergirl voice in use so she doesn't break down sobbing. 

"Alex, um, tried to commit suicide," Kara whispers the last word, afraid to say it too loudly for a reason unknown, even to herself. Both men look terrified at the explanation and sit down on the side of the room Kara used to be on. James takes the chair closest to Alex, holding her hand. Winn rests his hand on James' free one as comfort and stares at Alex in fear. 

Admittedly, they're all scared. Each of them knows what it's like to lose family and they can't afford to go through the pain again. They all don't think they would survive if Alex were to die. 

James would lose his second, nonbiological sister. The person that kept his other, nonbiological family safe and helped earn him one more sister. Another sister who's feisty and small and one hell of a detective. Kara and Winn would both lose the only big sister they've ever had. They would lose their sole protector. The person that also teased them ruthlessly, but with love and care. Winn and Kara would lose the person that helped them feel safe. Who helped them feel at home. Maggie would lose her world. Her world and everything Alex added to it. She would lose her safety, her home, and the person she relies on. Maggie would lose the only person that accepts her completely and without question. She would lose her everything. 

They all fear another loss and they all fear losing a person like the one laying in the bed in front of them. They all fear losing Alex. So they sit by the bed in anticipation and worry. In fear and hope. They sit and they wait. And they continue to wait when J'onn comes in and sits down in the chair next to Kara. 

They don't comment on the tears in the martian's eyes because J'onn is at risk of losing family, too. He could lose his middle Earth daughter. His daughter on Earth who is younger than the woman holding Alex's hand and older than the hero sitting next to him. He's could lose his hard, tough agent who is also his soft, loving daughter. 

All five of them sit together and take care of each other as Alex recovers from her coma. They make sure the others eat, sleep, and shower. They look after the others together. 

Together they pry Maggie from Alex to send her to the locker room for a shower. They call into Maggie's department for her so she doesn't have to explain to her captain why she'll be taking so much time off work. 

Together they get Kara to eat the large amount of food she still needs to consume to survive. They also make sure Kara gets out of the DEO routinely to get out some of her energy on Supergirl business. Because, even though she doesn't want to, she needs to. 

Together they force Winn to go home and sleep. They know he has difficulty doing so with the beeping of the heart monitor so they send him home. Never alone, though, somebody always joins him so Winn doesn't wake up in fear. And they make sure he sleeps well because they all know he gets nightmares, but he doesn't like to admit it. 

Together they make sure James keeps track of CatCo, even if it seems impossible. They also make sure James talks to his biological family because they know they worry. They know he has another sister to take care of and worry about. 

Together they make sure J'onn takes care of himself because he spends so much time taking care of everybody else, he forgets to do it for himself. And they make sure J'onn takes at least an hour break from Alex's room each day. He's a government agency to run and they also know it must be torture to hear all the worried and dark thoughts running through their heads 24/7. 

And when Eliza shows up, they watch over her as well and she watches over them. She watches over them because she knows most of them don't have mothers and god knows they all could use a mother right now. They watch over Eliza because her baby girl is laying in a hospital bed suffering from self-inflicted wounds. They all realize that this has to be one of the worst things to experience as a mother.

They all support one another. They continue to support each other one day in and then two days in, then three. They go through it all together. 

When Kara needs to go to the desert so she can shoot something with her heat vision but she can't be alone because they need to keep her safe. When Maggie feels like dying and like her heart is going to stop beating if she goes another day without Alex's beautiful smile. When James is collapsing under the pressure of CatCo and watching his sister fight to stay alive at the same time. When Winn thinks he can't do anything right and everything is his fault. When J'onn suddenly starts crying and nobody knows why. When Eliza refuses to leave the bedside and doesn't even take the time to eat until she almost passes out. And they're all together when Alex squints her eyes open and groans in pain. 

They all lurch forwards at once and then pull back together to give her space as if they're one, singular unit. They watch Alex as J'onn gets a doctor and Maggie grabs Alex's hand. Then, Alex bursts out in tears and they're all there. 

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry," She repeats over and over again. Alex repeats those words even as she winces in pain from the long, deep, vertical cuts on her arm. They stay with Alex and they calm her down and they promise she did nothing wrong. 

Alex stays in the DEO medical wing for over a week and then gets put on two months of lab duty. Absolutely no field assignments. She goes to therapy for over a year, as well, and the entire groups stays with her. Stays together. 

The aftermath of the attempt isn't pretty or simple, though. Maggie feels responsible and she has to go to therapy as well. The rest of the group is scarred emotionally. They're more cautious and fearful of something going wrong. They keep watch over everybody else more often and more intensly. 

But Alex, she's also scarred physically. The identical scars on her wrists stay with her forever and she hates them. She's embarrassed by them. When Alex is in public, her wrists are covered. They only are ever shone in the privacy of her home or her friends' homes. At game night, her wrists are on full display, reminding everybody of what they almost lost. They don't complain, though, because Alex is safe. With them. 

A month before Alex is due to get married to Maggie, she gets identical tattoos on her wrists. They cover her scars in a series of vines and flowers. On her wedding day, the ink is freely shown and Alex's wrists aren't covered by fabric. 

They stay together through it all, especially after that day. After the day they almost lost a part of the family. But they didn't. They didn't lose a sister or a daughter or a girlfriend. They didn't lose a part of their life. Because Alex held on and they all held together.


End file.
